The Collected Christopher Connery by L. EE Page B

circle around Gail’s
body.
    For another minute or two, Gail didn’t feel anything but
the blood running down her skin and the slow certainty that each beat of her
heart was coming slower than the one before it. Then that was replaced by the
sensation of her stomach dropping like she’d suddenly been swung out into empty
space.
    Then strength rushed back into her limbs. She rolled over
on to her knees and somehow found it in her not to be sick all over the floor.
 
    Nia took her arm and gently helped her stand. “I’m sorry,
detective,” she said in a soft trembling voice. “I am so terribly sorry.”
    “No – no harm done,” Gail managed to gasp, hands braced
on her knees as she breathed the lingering nausea away. When she straightened
up, she gazed in fascination at her completely healed arms. “Damn. Thanks.”
    Nia said nothing.
    Tearing her eyes away from her remarkably uninjured skin,
Gail looked around the room. “Where’s your brother?”
    As if on cue, Arthur stepped into the room. His clothes
were splattered with blood and he was holding one of his arms protectively
against his body, but he looked mostly okay. When Nia went to check on him,
Gail took a few steadying breaths. Her head still felt like it might float away
from her body like balloon if she moved too quick, but as long as she didn’t
have to tangle with any more possessed toys, she was pretty sure she’d be all
right. Noticing that no one else had thought to collect Connery’s head –
hopefully it was Connery’s anyway; they didn’t need some other jerk’s head –
she moved to get it herself.
    She managed about three steps before crashing to the
floor.
    Out like a light.

9
Nia Graves
    There was a rather tense hour during which Nia was fairly
certain that she had murdered Detective Lin.
    “I only wanted to help,” she said frantically to Arthur
as they carried the unconscious woman down the stairs and out of the house.
“She was dying. There must have been some toxic substance painted on the toys.”
    “Toxic?” asked Arthur as he lay Gail down in the back of
the car. The detective hardly twitched, even when he curled up her legs to fit
her inside, but at least she was still breathing.
    “Yes, her heart rate was slowly alarmingly. If I hadn’t
done something, she – oh, what if she dies?”
    “She won’t die,” Arthur said with a doctor’s calm as he
checked Gail’s pulse with two fingers. “She seems all right now. She needs
rest. That’s all.”
    But underneath the easy clinical tone, Nia heard a note
of uncertainty that he couldn’t entirely hide, not from her, and her stomach
clenched.
    Arthur looked down at the severed head tucked under her
arm. “I see you found him.”
    “Detective Lin did.” Nia held the head between her hands.
“She was very clever to discover the hiding place.” She looked down at Gail
again, guilt gnawing in her belly. Had she made the right choice? Perhaps she
should have waited and tried to treat Gail’s wounds conventionally first, but
the detective had been so still…
    “You used a lot of magic on her,” Arthur said as he
draped his torn and bloodstained jacket over the unconscious detective.
    “Yes, perhaps I did.” Nia caught her bottom lip between
her teeth. “But under the circumstances, I felt had no choice.”
    Arthur looked at her silently for a moment then moved
toward the driver’s side door. “We can talk about it at the hotel. We should
get her to bed and then call the Academy to get someone to clean up this
house.”
    Nia knew she should have been the one saying that, but
she could watch Gail breathe for another moment before climbing silently into
the passenger seat. Oh, please, don’t let things have gone wrong already…
    When they arrived at the hotel, there were a few moments
of confusion. Nia had only ever left the Academy campus once or twice before
and never alone. Arthur had been outside more often, but only during carefully
supervised trips to the